I meant His plan was known, not foreknown. Foreknown is refering to: Before time knowing about an event that will take place in the future. By known, I refer to knowing before time about a plan that was made before time. God knew His plan, He didn't need to foreknow it.
The term, "foreknow", is for the sake of our temporal minds. Exactly right, that God didn't need to foreknow it, if "foreknow" is only 'looking into the future'. From his perspective it is already done. It is
we who need to separate concepts of "speaking into being" vs "causing by long-chain cause-and-effect". God is not constrained by time. Therefore, he has no need to look into the future to decide what to cause. HE is the cause of the future, and all who inhabit it.
Notice in Hebrews 2, the odd use of tenses:
7 "You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
8 putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
"Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him."
Here we see completed action, past tense* (
"made"), of a temporal assignment (
"for a little while"), and again completed action, (
"crowned", "put in subjection"), with the difference between God's economy and our temporal economy, pointed at for explanation in, ([But,]
"At present, we do not yet see it under subjection.")
*I assume the past tense, for the sake of clarity of my point here. The aorist doesn't have to mean past, it can just as well be future; it only implies a point-of-action, not a present continuing action, nor even a past (or future) "for-a-while" action. In fact, I find it suggestive of the notion of God's timeless economy of operation, that he chose the Greek, which has these curiously un-English tenses, particularly with the aorist that has no reference to our position in a timeline.
And the Hebrews reference here is by no means the only one hinting at this distinction. And some of the references don't even use the aorist to do it.
To me, then, this is relevant to the discussion of his foreknowing and decreeing. He doesn't need to look into the future. He spoke the future into having already happened. We just don't see it that way.
As a side note, God's "non-temporal-based decree" (i.e. God speaking it all into being) point of view here is also relevant to the question of Free Will vs Predestination, and also, 'regeneration prior to faith' vs 'faith prior to regeneration'.
If it is (awkwardly, no doubt) descriptive of the reality of the matter, that God has spoken a temporal envelope, perhaps billions of years long or longer, into being with just a word, the envelope of time and all that is within it, (described from within our language), can only be said to be 'already accomplished', 'completed', though "we do not yet see it [that way]".
Now, I suspect the truth of the matter is that this I have described, which is only "a way to look at it", is a lot more incomprehensible to us at present than what I have attempted to describe. But more on that another day, I hope. Thanks for listening, brother.
